As is usual at this time of year, Royal Mail are on the hunt for Christmas temps and have set up a website to recruit them.
This year they’re after 21,000 workers to help sort the Christmas post. The seasonal positions will supplement Royal Mail’s permanent 124,000 postmen and women. 18,000 roles are in England, 2,000 in Scotland, 700 in Wales and 400 in Northern Ireland. No previous mail industry experience is necessary as training is provided.
That’ll get the mail sorted and Royal Mail posties normally do a sterling job with the actual delivery process, but this year there’s the threat of not only CWU strikes by the posties, but also Unite are gearing up to bring the country to a standstill, and that would mean Royal Mail management walking off the job too.
The unions aren’t just targeting Royal Mail, although with privatisation plans they’re an obvious place to start. The Sun reports that Unite have “drawn up a secret masterplan to drag the country to its knees with a wave of strikes”.
Just to add to the mayhem, the NUT and the NASUWT are already planning action which may result in half the country staying at home to look after their children, they’ve announced a couple of strike days in October.
Get set for a winter of discontent and more importantly get your emergency plans in place for switching your deliveries to alternative mail carriers and couriers if strikes start to affect you. We know it’ll probably cost you more and we know it’ll hurt the Royal Mail and if they lose business they’ll never get it all back again, but don’t let your business suffer because the Unions want to flex their muscles.
2 Responses
Crackers….just as the country as signs of life again the unions want to mess it up.
I wish there was some other alternative to RM for us but selling a number of items under £10 there is no hope of finding an affordable alternative.
I found I had a really busy day when the teachers were on strike last time.
I would still rather the teachers selected a strike date during their long holidays.